Modern Adventuring & Plunder
A downloadable game
Modern Adventuring & Plunder is a lightweight, streamlined and extensible ruleset in the spirit of Old School Renaissance. It provides everything you need to run a table top role playing game in a fantasy world. If you like exploration, combat-as-war, player skill and rulings-not-rules, you will feel at home.
Now available as Print-On-Demand: https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Adventuring-Plunder-Core-Rules/dp/B09ZCTBTDV/
What is special about Modern Adventuring & Plunder?
- Not a retro-clone... MA&P keeps the spirit of OSR, but doesn't constrain itself with the original mechanic.
- ...but compatible with existing modules! I run Castle Xyntillan, Wizard's Vengeance , Praise The Fallen, Sision Tower, ASE, The Many Gates of the Gann, Operation Unfathomable and The Red Prophet Rises without converting any monsters or traps. Any adjustments are done on the fly as rulings.
- Small... The size of the ruleset is 30 6x9 pages and will never go over 32. You can read it in a half an hour and start playing.
- ...but
viciouscomplete. This is a complete system with fully fleshed rules, 45 spells, 40 monsters, 43 talents. No need for DIY, unless you want to. - Classless & Levelless. Arcane thief? Paladin with lock picks? Spell-sword? A vampire hunter? You can be anything you want. Grow you character in any direction with a talent system.
- Streamlined. Only 4 attributes. No separate saving throws. All checks are roll above. Turn undead is just another spell. No special thief skills.
- Flexible. Expand possible classes and specialization through a system of talents and spells.
- Equipment & Encumbrance matter. No counting pounds. Limited inventory slots force players to make tough decision what equipment is most useful.
- Fast start. Choose one of four playbooks. Choose a name. Ready to play!
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- MAP character sheet is available on roll20!Jan 20, 2023
- Version 1.1.0Dec 24, 2022
- Version 1.0.1Oct 23, 2022
- Character sheet is available!Sep 16, 2022
- Version 1.0May 06, 2022
- Version 0.5 publishedMar 01, 2022
- What's next?Jan 22, 2022
Comments
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Did you ever finish the player's companion? Also, how would you play non-humans in this system?
Unfortunately, I had trouble finding players online for MAP and I try to play test things I publish. I switched to OSE, which has a bigger player pool.. As a result I never got to complete it.
I do have rough notes I was using for play testing here if you are interested: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Jt_tXqANC1ITSQe5s-1SFZJjPJg-L0-DOUJWfdWUyZ0/...
I had the following idea how to do non-humans. Being a non-human is a special talent, called ancestry. The talent itself offers only some ribbon/flavor improvements (e.g. unlimited lifespan for elves, immunity to ghoul paralysis, +2 on searching for secret doors) and since it's a regular talent, it increases the cost of purchasing further talents (buying your next talent costs 7XP for non-humans, vs 6XP for humans). In return the non-human has access to some talents not available for humans (e.g. infravision, immune to charm).
This way non-humans can feel special, but it's costly to be a non-human. This encourages being a human, which keeps the spirit of old games (human centric).
We play-tested these and my players really liked being non-human: I had a goblin, a giant mantis, a dhampir and a dwarf in my ASE campaign.
Thanks! This is great. If I get a chance to run this stuff, I will let you know!
This needs a Fillable Chararcter Sheet... So I made that, I think it is right.
Amazing, thank you!
Some minor feedback for v1.1.0:
Cheers!
Thanks!
I picked this up from Amazon, and it's a well executed and cool concept. I love non-linear advancement, and this shows it can be applied to D&D's class-based system reliably.
I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for the support!
Absolutely. I prefer more crunch, but this showed me how to do what I had been toying with for a few months now, so thank you.
Thanks for sharing this!
I skimmed through in ~10 minutes and immediately had a feel for how this would play at the table. I like the class-less, level-less PCs with the talents system. Would consider this for running old-school modules.
Nice use of font, so my old-man eyes can read it easily from my phone/tablet.
Roll20 sheet is a nice touch, but I'll probably use Foundry VTT (with the Simple Worldbuilding System for a basic character sheet).
Suggestion: Add bookmarks to the PDF.
Thanks a lot for the feedback! Good point with the bookmarks, I will add for the next version, when I make a larger update.
I noticed this:
On wilderness time units:
"While exploring the wilderness the GM uses 6 hours long units of time called quarters of the day."
On spell casting:
"you must rest uninterrupted for 8 hours to regain that ability."
What about making spell casting recovery require a quarter of time (6h), that way it aligns?
Also, I see that "resting" is described in adventure site exploration, risking the Exhausted condition. But, there is no mention of sleeping once per day vs Exhausted condition? Are consuming rations required as well to avoid being Exhausted?
Yes, resting 6 hours instead makes sense. When watches are set the casting characters must be first or last.
Yes, consuming rations is required too. Resting vs sleeping -> I kind of left to the GM's decision. At night it's probably sleeping, in the day it might be just resting.
I really like this minimalist RPG. It seems to have everything, while missing most of the old stale tropes. Well done sir! Any thought to providing an adventure or two for this?
Thank you for the kind words! I wish I had enough time, I would definitely create something :-( I mostly run pre-made adventures though and on-the-fly convert them to this module.
I run on this the following adventures:
-> Castle Xyntillan (very easy),
-> Praise the Fallen, Sision Tower (very good adventures from Graphite Prime),
-> Wizard's Vengeance (that's my own adventure which I wrote before I wrote this setting; some day I will try to publish a conversion).
I am about to run Anomalous Subsurface Environment. If we reach beyond what is available, I am thinking about creating my own levels. If I do, I will be creating them for MAP and will publish then.
Very interested in how you go with ASE (something I've always wanted to run). Would you consider blogging your experiences as you go?
We explored the gatehouse level and the majority of the first level. Unfortunately, my players didn't like ASE - I think it was boring comparing to other modules we played. Instead, we ventured into The Red Prophet Rises (many casualties, they retreated), then Many Gates of the Gann (exploring more than a half of it) and now we are finishing the campaign by trying to get out of the underworld of Operation Unfathomable. Overall, I think ASE is too sparse (too many empty rooms or rooms that pretend have content, but are really empty - like having broom and a bucket), doesn't have exciting NPCs to interact with, monsters are just bags of HPs. I can't recommend.
In March we are starting Night's Dark Terrors, but this time on OSE. I will see how it works out.
Ah, that's a shame re: ASE being a boring dungeon, have heard a similar story before.
I read the Denethix Campaign Setting chapters, and loved the maps, history, factions, random tables, and orbital gods.
I really like the orbital gods too! Sadly, the concept alone was not sufficient to carry the megadungeon. Gus L. has a cool module about orbital gods infighting https://archive.org/details/obelisk_final , but we didn't get to it.
Is the Print on Demand version on Amazon the latest version of the game? Which I believe is 1.0?
@Crusader X Yes! All updates were applied to the POD pdf and that pdf was actually uploaded later to itch. No changes since then.
Sounds great! I really like these rules. Is there a character sheet available?
There isn't :-( Mostly because the PC information is so small, that I never thought it would be useful (but surely a beautiful character sheet would be nice). All information you need is
HP, Def, Str, Dex, Wis, Cha
Talents: A, B, C, D, E
Equipment: A, B, C, D E
But that's a good idea, I should think about having some attractive character sheet, that would make playing nicer.
The character sheet is now available!
Very nice! Thank you for adding the character sheet!
I just have to say this. As someone who has burnt himself out on multiple TTRPG's including D&D 5e and multiple OSR games, this is by the far the best simplified OSR game I have seen since White Box: Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game. It satisfies that itch that I've been craving for a long time and presents all the rules in a straightforward way. In a way I already simplified my own games similar to this, but it didn't "click" until I found this.
In all seriousness, thanks for this game. My bookshelf is breaking under the number of books I have and I don't have anymore space, but I'm definitely buying this book POD. 10/10! It doesn't have everything, but it has just the right stuff to get you where want to be.
I can't overstate this enough. Huge thanks!
I'm glad you like it :) Can you tell me what do you think it's missing? I want to keep refining it, so if there are reports that some rules are missing, I would add them.
I am also slowly working on player companion.
White Box was an inspiration for me.
When you run it, please do let me know how it worked out!
So glad to see this title on Amazon!
All the updates are great too!
A+++
I'm glad you like it! When you run, I would love to hear how it went!
Can you inform us what changed in the most recent version of MAP?
Ah, good point! I haven't been keeping a log though, so I might miss some stuff :(
I will try to list all the things from the initial publishing:
* Simplified the advancement. There are just XP now, no more advancements and levels. This was confusing people (both my players in playtests and proof reader), so some streamlining
* Additional attack is now per combat (to balance it with other things), that's streamlining because now every talent costs the same
* Improved ability checks/saves talents are now +4 instead of +2 (they weren't appealing enough to buy). Immunity to poison and fear are +7 now.
* Short sword is now non-martial weapon (otherwise it made no sense from usability perspective). I think I might have made the mace destructive to (to break through stone doors).
* A lot of fixes for missing prices, wrong words, etc.
So far, I really like it.
Quick question: I don't understand the difference between spending XP for Attribute increases and buying the Attribute-increasing talents. It seems that buying a talent that gives a +3 to an attribute is way more cost-effective than spending 10 XP times the next attribute point. What am I not seeing here?
The talent grants you +3 to specific attribute checks (e.g. if you take the Improved dexterity ability, you will get +3 when sneaking, searching for traps, scaling sheer surfaces).
If you improve the DEX attribute, you get multiple benefits:
+1 to attribute checks (so similarly sneaking, searching for traps, scaling sheer surfaces)
+1 to saving throws (breath, mechanical traps - mind, there is a talent that grants +3 to these too, Improved dexterity saves)
+1 to Def
+1 to ranged weapon attacks
In other words, the attribute increases a lot of different stats, while the talent allows you focused increase in a specific area.
Got it. I was making too many assumptions and not paying attention to what was actually written on the page. Thank you for the quick response. You've written a great little OSR-inspired gem!
Thank you for the kind words! Stay tuned for expansions :)
Great little game!
Its like a blend of Rogueland/Whitebox .
I will definitely use these rules.
Bravo.
Thanks a lot for the kind words!